The Truth About Deep Inner Work - Why Your Brain Won't Reveal Anything You Can't Handle

Summary

In this episode of the Catapult Effect podcast, host Katie Wrigley addresses the common fear of what individuals may uncover during their inner work and healing journey. She emphasizes that the fear of healing is often more uncomfortable than the actual process and reassures listeners that their nervous system is designed to protect them. Through personal anecdotes and client experiences, Katie illustrates the importance of trusting oneself and being ready for deep healing. She discusses the role of resistance in the healing process and encourages listeners to embrace their journey at their own pace, highlighting that readiness is crucial for effective healing.

Takeaways

Our nervous system's primary role is to keep us safe.

The brain will not reveal anything we can't handle.

Healing is a process of gathering data about ourselves.

Trusting oneself is a vital part of the healing journey.

Readiness for healing is essential; don't rush the process.

Resources

• Website
• Learn more about Cognomovement
• Try Cognomovement for yourself!
• Book a call with Katie

Credit: Tom Giovingo, Intro & Outro, Random Voice Guy, Professional ‘Cat‘ Herder

Mixed & Managed: JohnRavenscraft.com

Disclaimer: Katie is not a medical professional and she is not qualified to diagnose any conditions. The advice and information she gives is based on her own experience and research. It does not take the place of medical advice. Always consult a medical professional first before you try anything new.

Transcript

Katie Wrigley (00:00.856)

Welcome back to the Catapult Effect podcast. I am your host, Katie Wrigley. In today's episode, I want to address a concern slash question that I hear a lot of people wondering about before they start to do some deeper inner work, as we may refer to it. And that question is, what if I can't handle what I find?

and the comment that goes with that is I'm really afraid of what may be under there. So we're going to talk about that today in this episode. So stay tuned. That's coming right up.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I know you have your choice of a lot of different things to listen to out there on the internet and I truly appreciate you taking the time to listen to this episode and I trust that this is gonna help meet you where you are and help you move forward with what you are working on for your own life. So one of the most common fears slash questions that comes up as people are doing this work or looking to do

some more inner work and help to heal from traumas and other events that they've experienced in the past. And that fear is about what may be under the surface. What may be the things that are keeping them awake. They're afraid of what they may find out and they're afraid that it may be something that they can't handle. And if that is you, I totally understand. I have felt that fear directly. And here is what I know.

that fear and about that question and the truth of how the brain really works. The fear of and resistance to the healing is always going to be vastly more uncomfortable than anything you can find as you're doing the healing that is. And let me explain this. The brain is not going to reveal something to you that you can't handle.

Katie Wrigley (02:10.898)

or that isn't relevant. It's not the way we work. Your nervous system is there to keep you safe and alive. That's it. It's its whole job. So doesn't care if you're happy, doesn't care if you're calm. It cares about keeping you safe. Our nervous system is how humans have survived. Because if you look at what we come with organically, we do not have the same defense mechanisms as tigers, bears,

some of the other predators out there that could actually kill us. We created weapons, we went a different way, but the thing that kept us safe is that nervous system and that inner knowing, that prickle on the back of the neck when someone's watching you. That is a built-in mechanism that has helped humans survive for all the years that we have been there. Depending on what theory you look at, either tens of thousands of years or a couple of thousand years.

whatever it is, that is the piece that has helped us survive.

It is not going to bring something to light that is going to make you crazy. When people get to a point where they are considering taking their life, or they actually do take their life, and it is an absolute tragedy, and it is heartbreaking whenever anyone gets to that point. And from the people I know, and I've actually known seven people directly in my life,

who have died by suicide and I've known many more indirectly through clients, through friends, other people who have unfortunately taken the same road. And when the brain gets to that point, you have pretty much convinced yourself that there is no way out if you're suffering except to end it. And when I also look at what those people were doing, none of them were really doing this deep work.

Katie Wrigley (04:13.58)

or not very many of them, or they weren't going at a level deeper to really start to find things and heal. From some people that I've known really up close, there was a huge level of resistance to doing anything to help themselves, anything to empower themselves. They were stuck in victim mode for whatever reasons that they had. This is their journey. It's not up to me. I can offer help. I can offer support, but I can't...

impact someone's journey unless they are willing to help. But what I've seen as a common denominator, they aren't doing that deep work. It's not that they found out something from their past that drove them crazy. And now this isn't to say that someone from your past may give you information you're not ready to hear. That absolutely can happen. What I'm talking about in this episode is what's happening in the mind, in the body, in the one individual being that you are.

your brain is not going to pull something out of the subconscious that you can't handle. I just want to give you a couple of for instance, from my own life and then also some things that I've seen in client sessions. As sometimes, I will be honest with you, this session can get intense and it's not very frequent that this happens. But the session can get really intense. I'm watching the body and the nervous system do things that may start to feel like it's a little bit out of

what I can actually do and the thing that roots me and keeps me in that session, keeps me effective is this is a truth of every human being. Whatever they are experiencing in that session, they are ready to experience. And sometimes I will reflect that back to them.

So I noticed this first in my giant resistance, which I've talked about in other episodes. Denial was my go-to for the longest time. And I really noticed this increase in anxiety, especially when I was going into psychedelic ceremonies, such as three-day ayahuasca ceremonies. And even to this day, there can be a little bit of resistance going into a cognitive movement session. And again, I'm going to lean back on the idea that there's nothing that's coming up in that session. I'm not ready.

Katie Wrigley (06:30.776)

Doesn't mean I'm gonna like it. And a lot of times I don't like it. But I'm ready to handle it. And it's just data. When you start to look at it, and it's true as form, it's just data. It's helping you get more information about what's making you the person that you are today. And that can include some behavior patterns that you aren't very proud of. And all of that's okay. It's data to allow you to decide, do I wanna do things differently?

Or do I want to continue to do things the same? And it's always going to be your choice.

The last time I did an ayahuasca ceremony was in 2023. And I have a vivid recollection of walking my neighborhood. And this was before Tangee was delivering me full time. So I was just walking on my own. And I was just noticing the amount of anxiety that was coming up. And I was even questioning for myself, why in the world am I feeling this anxious? Like at the time of that ceremony, I had actually already done 16 prior ayahuasca ceremonies. My brain and my body knew what to do.

And once I started to do Cognitive Movement, those ceremonies, I was able to go way deeper, connect way more easily, and heal on such profoundly deep levels. I'm still doing a little bit of integration from my last ceremony, which was almost two and a half years ago now. And I've also gone to Cognitive Movement as more of my regular ceremonial routine to get that deeper healing.

Because for me staying in the so sober state of mind to do this, that's more beneficial to me. It doesn't mean that I may not get called back to the medicine, I just haven't. But the point of me sharing that, I remember that level of fear. And I took that fear into that ceremony. And I also allowed someone to get in my head who was adding to that fear. And turns out it was a misunderstanding between the two of us. But what I took in there was that something bad was going to happen.

Katie Wrigley (08:34.222)

And the big lesson for me in that ceremony that took me a while to integrate was learning to trust myself. And in that particular episode ceremony, did, let's see, I did a three day ayahuasca and then I did, a pause and then did a one day self-facilitated ayahuasca, took a pause. And then the last day I was there, I did a high dose psilocybin ceremony.

That psilocybin was not letting me go until I understood what I was there to learn. And it was only as the sun was coming up that the next day and I took my medicine before the sun went down the prior day. So that medicine was not letting me go until I learned the lesson. And the lesson was I trust myself. I can trust myself.

And it still took me over a year to integrate that. I do fully trust myself now. I really do. But my gosh, that was a really hard lesson for me to learn. And there was so much fear that came up for me in that ceremony and I faced it. And the thing that I want you to hear in all of this is that I came out of it okay. All that fear was doing was making it harder for me to do the work.

And now when we apply that fear resistance to cognitive movement, we can still see it there. And what it looks like sometimes is someone's gonna talk for the whole session instead of getting into working with the ball. I've actually had someone who was an in-person client, as we were tossing the ball, grab the ball, stick it under his arm.

and literally refused to keep doing cognitive movement with me because when we're working one-on-one, we're actually tossing the ball back and forth for that cross-body movement that helps down regulate the nervous system. He literally grabbed the ball and held onto it. My theory on that is because he had this deep rooted need for things not to work. The prior two actually had been so successful, he wasn't actually sure what to do with that.

Katie Wrigley (10:50.988)

And it makes sense to me because we get into these patterns that become part of our identity and part of his identity is that this kind of stuff doesn't work for him. And so as it was starting to work, he was now faced with the fact that, hey, something may work. And then now what was he going to do? Because this part of his story wasn't allowing for it. And had he wanted to continue working,

Then we could have worked through that. We could have helped him shift into a new identity, but he was so resistant. That was the last session he did with me. That's okay. This is not about pushing. Everybody wants to go at their own pace. And now I mentioned earlier in this episode that I've seen the nervous system do some things that can almost start to make me feel a little anxious because part of me is like, okay, I'm not really sure what to do with this here. And I've seen various different things happen in the session. One that

came to me and this was several months ago. I was working with someone and they had actually had former abductions come up and they had noted a little bit previously before the session that they thought that there may have been something in the past and they were feeling kind of uneasy and this had been something this person had been aware of for years but wasn't ready to face it until that day. Then they were ready.

And in the session, the person was almost flipping between different personas. The voice was changing. This had happened to them at a couple of different ages. And the voice was changing. was going into the child voice. It was going into the teenager voice. And the body was almost shifting positions as they did it. And at one point, they asked me, am I going crazy? Am I losing my mind? The fear was really high.

And I kept saying, your mind is revealing this to you because you can handle it. You are not going crazy. I am with you all the way. We are going to work through this. And kept going through the prompts. The things that came up, the fear that came up, kept prompting through it. And in about 20 minutes, all of that was passed. She kind of went back into her regular body and looked around and was like, oh my gosh.

Katie Wrigley (13:15.084)

It was a really, really profound session for both of us. And I really anchored into the knowledge that I was not watching someone lose their mind. I was not watching someone go off the deep end and no part of me thinks this person is crazy at all. Not even during that session. And the thing that kept me focused and present was knowing how the brain works.

That brain was not revealing anything to her that she wasn't ready for. And so I kept telling her like, what is important about this? You are ready to face this. You are ready to face this. This is why it's coming up. You're ready. Your brain's not going to reveal something you can't handle. And we were able to continue to work through the session from there, which was really, really profound and

She's actually thanked me multiple times since then for being in that space with her. And it was my honor to be able to do so. And in working with other people, I'll see other different neurological clues. Like I've seen a couple people whose eyes have just kind of suddenly rolled up into the back of their head and then they go slack. It looks like they passed out. They haven't. Their nervous system just got a little overloaded for a moment. And then they came back within.

seconds. Again, this is very, very rare and they were completely fine. They may have needed a little bit more rest, extra water, extra salt to help that nervous system continue to process, but they were learning things that they were ready to learn.

That fear and resistance, those are the things that are creating suffering, not what you find out in a session. Whether you're doing psychedelics, working with therapists, doing EMDR, doing cognitive movement, whatever you are choosing to do for yourself, even yoga, doing somatic releasing, different various, there's so many different healing modalities that are available for you out there. And whatever you are choosing to do, first of all, kudos for doing this.

Katie Wrigley (15:27.404)

Because even though the brain is not going to reveal something that you can't handle, this work is also not for the faint of heart. It may be a simple concept to be connecting into the body and helping the body give answers, the whole mind-body system, allowing the body to speak to us, to help resolve different areas of our life, using the subconscious to be able to resolve different areas of our life. It's simple in its concept, but it's not always easy.

I've had some really tough sessions and I'm so glad that I've had them. You absolutely want to make sure that you're ready for this work. And in my life, I had to be disabled before I was ready for this work. And it's not like I jumped in with the full openness I have now. As I mentioned before, I had years of denial coming in, even as I got into Cognitive Movement. And less and less resistance now and people who are going to call me on it not let me stay in that resistance so long.

but you want to make sure that you're ready for this work. And if you're not ready, that's okay. Understand that your body is going to be holding on to all of that stuff until you're ready to let it go. And so there may be consequences to you not being ready. And it is also very, very important that you are ready to embark on this journey.

Don't force yourself to do it before you're ready. You can be uncomfortable. You can have some fear. That's normal. But when you're at the level of courage of saying, okay, I'm going to push through this fear and I'm going to do it, you're ready. It doesn't mean that it's going to be comfortable. You're probably going to be uncomfortable, especially going into your first session. It can be a little bit uncomfortable. And I've heard more often than not, I've been really nervous about the session. Like, I got it.

And that's one of the beauties about Cognitive Movement is it's not going to push you. It meets you where you are and we work with whatever is available. And the more willing you are to be in that state, to be willing to just focus on what you're noticing in the body and allow yourself to shift at whatever rate your body and mind want to shift, those are going to be some of the most powerful sessions that you can be in. That readiness is really important.

Katie Wrigley (17:56.638)

Thank you for joining me today. I trust that this was helpful for you and please understand the fear and the resistance it is normal and those are also the pieces that resistance to helping yourself that fear of what you may find those are keeping you from the deeper healing and that deeper healing that's what leads to that regulated nervous system and that regulated nervous system is where you get to have everything.

that you've wanted in your life.

Until next time, please be well. And thank you again for joining me.